December 24, 2007
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
For the most part, none of us who are city dwellers have seen a stable or lived on a farm or cared for animals for a living. I heard that they are trying to renovate and restore the horse stables in Golden Gate Park but how many people in San Francisco actually own horses?
I can still remember when zoos used to keep their wild animals in small cells behind bars. And when you went into the lion house or the elephant house, you can always bet that one of the attractions of visiting such animals in cages is that you’ll smell the beasts. The closest experience that I can remember of smelling animals is when cute little chicks that we bought for Easter would eventually grow up to be real size chickens that pooped. I’m sure glad that we don’t do that anymore.
Born in a Stable
When Jesus was born, there was no more room in the inn. The only place available was underneath the house where the animals were kept. Most of us have these miniature crèches or nativity sets with little candy-like statuettes, the holy stable, clean and prettily painted, with a neat, tidy manger, an ecstatic donkey, a contrite cow, and angels fluttering their wings on the roof—this is not the stable where Jesus was born.
The poor old stable of Christ’s poor country is only four rough walls, a floor of dirt, a roof of beams, mud and straw. It is dark, reeking, cold in the winter, stifling in the summer. It’s more like the bamboo-thatched houses that we visited in Northern Thailand where the people lived upstairs and right underneath them is where the pigs, chickens, ducks, and even cows lived.
This is the real stable where Jesus began his earthly life. Tonight, let’s not let our sugarcoated, pastel-hue image of Christmas dull us to understand the scandal of Jesus’ birth. The filthiest place in the world was the first dwelling of the most perfect person ever to be born.
The poet Ann Weems speaks of the simplicity and mystery of the incarnation this way:
“Somehow the setting is all wrong:
the swaddling clothes too plain,
the manger too common for the likes of a Savior,
the straw inelegant,
the animals, reeking and noisy,
the whole scene too ordinary for our taste…”
But that’s what it was. It was not by accident that Christ was born in a stable. This stable means something.
Our World is a Stable
What is this world in which we live but an immense stable where people produce the filth and wallow in it? Though we are said by the Bible to be a little lower than God, like the angels, we sink to incredible depths.
When we see that homicides have risen in San Francisco as well as in all the major cities in the U.S., we live in a stable. When the Palestinians and the Israelis can’t live in peace, we are in the stable. When the wars in Iraq and in Afghanistan are still raging, we are in a stable. When there’s political corruption and scandals in all levels of government, we are in a stable. When we pollute knowingly or unknowingly on this fragile planet, we are spoiling God’s wondrous creation and making it like a smelly and messy stable. And honestly, when we mistreat and abuse animals, it’s not that they are in a stable but we are.
On this earthly pigsty, where no colorful decorations or any amount of perfumes can hide the sight and odor of filth, Jesus appeared one night, came to make his home in a stable, born of a stainless virgin, a poor young woman armed only with innocence.
In every culture, there’s a fable of a king who would go out to visit and walk among his people incognito while his security guards would worry about his safety. The king would say, “I cannot rule my people unless I know how they live.” For us Chinese, that’s where the table etiquette of taping our two fingers after being served tea came from.
Jesus was born in a stable so that he would know how to rule us in our hearts and to rescue us from the stinking and messy world that we have created. Jesus is our king who was born in a stable so that he would know how we lived.
Stable Prison
Several years ago, there was a book by Giovanni Papini on the Life of Christ. Papini noted that a stable is a prison for animals, a place where animals are confined for human need. It is notable that Jesus was born there.
Jesus was born in a stable so that our needs would be met—“the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.”
Perhaps our greatest hope for our world is to live in peace. There is a story in which a governmental official asked people for ideas of how to bring peace to the world. A young mother suggested that a child be present for all the disarmament negotiations. And so it was that two mothers who took their children to future meetings. The children were referred to as the “children of peace.” Over the next three years, there were moments of laughter, childish pranks and playfulness often provided just the right touch to soften touching emotions and cranky dispositions. If such a story became “real” in our modern world, who knows what might happen? But it did happen—in the birth of Christ, the Peace Child!
In a stable in Bethlehem, it was the beasts that first warmed Jesus with their breath. They kept watch over his crib—a manger, a feed trough for livestock. In later years, when Jesus went up to the city for the Passover, he was mounted on a donkey. And though the jackals howled, the lions roared, and the wolves showed their teeth, Jesus pressed on, bore his cross, died to bring us to himself and to bring us to our true selves again.
Born in a stable in Bethlehem, Jesus saved us from the stable prisons of the world so that we, in the name and power of Christ, may begin to bring good news of great joy to all people, for tonight is born in the city of David, a Savior who is the Messiah, the Lord for the whole stinking and messy world.
Let us pray.